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 After a month of rebel infighting, al Qaeda disavowed the
increasingly independent ISIL in a move likely to bolster a rival
Islamist group, the Nusra Front, as al Qaeda's official proxy in
Syria.
The switch is seen as an attempt to redirect the Islamist effort
towards unseating President Bashar al-Assad rather than waste
resources in fighting other rebels, and could be intended to shift
the strategic balance at a time when government forces are
increasingly active on the battlefield.
Overall, the three-year-old war however remains largely deadlocked,
with Syria fragmented into areas controlled by the warring parties.
ISIL has fought battles with other Islamist insurgents and secular
rebel groups, often triggered by disputes over authority and
territory. Several secular and Islamist groups announced a campaign
last month against ISIL.
The internecine fighting — some of the bloodiest in the war so far — has undermined the uprising against Assad and dismayed Western
powers pushing for peace talks between the government and
opposition.
Rebel-on-rebel violence in Syria has killed at least 2,300 this year
alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
monitoring group.
ISIL follows al Qaeda's hard-line ideology and, until now, the two
groups were officially linked. Many foreign fighters and ISIL
observers, however, say that al Qaeda central and ISIL had in fact
been effectively separated since before the group, which was
originally the al Qaeda branch in Iraq, spread into Syria.
Hard-line Islamist rebels, including Nusra, have come to dominate
the largely Sunni Muslim insurgency against Assad, who is supported
by his minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam — as
well as Shi'ite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
In a message on jihadi websites on Monday, the al Qaeda General
Command said ISIL "is not a branch of the al Qaeda group.
"...(Al Qaeda) does not have an organizational relationship with it
and is not the group responsible for their actions."
In April, ISIL head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi tried to force a merger
with the Nusra Front, defying orders from al Qaeda chief Ayman
Zawahri and causing a rift.
ISIL DISOBEDIENCE
Charles Lister, visiting fellow at Brookings Doha Center, said the
al Qaeda statement "represents an attempt by al Qaeda to
definitively re-assert some level of authority over the jihad in
Syria" following a month of fighting and ISIL disobedience.
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"This represents a strong and forthright move by (al Qaeda) and will
undoubtedly serve to further consolidate Jabhat al-Nusra's role as
al Qaeda's official presence in Syria."
But ISIL is proving a strong force. On Sunday, ISIL fighters freed
more than 400 people from a prison in northern Syria who had been
held by the rival Islamist Liwa al-Tawhid unit, the Syrian
Observatory said.
It added that in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, ISIL seized
the Koniko gas field from the Nusra Front and other Islamist rebels
who had controlled it for several weeks after wresting it from
tribal gunmen. Koniko is one of the largest gas plants in Syria.
A fighter from a rebel group that has clashed with ISIL said the gas
field was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a week in output.
ISIL and its Iraqi predecessor have been a source of controversy
among Islamists for many years.
The group alienated many in its strongholds in Iraq's western Anbar
province during its period of control there after the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion by imposing harsh punishments based on its severe
interpretation of Islamic law and staging attacks with heavy
civilian death tolls.
ISIL has been using similar methods in Syria. On Sunday, an amateur
video on the Internet showed ISIL fighters publicly decapitating a
man in Syria believed to have been a pro-government Shi'ite fighter.
In Iraq, the army intensified its shelling of Falluja city on Sunday
in preparation for a ground assault to regain control of the city,
which has been under the control of militants, including ISIL, for a
month.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had held off an all-out
offensive to give local tribesmen a chance to expel the militants
themselves.
(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut and Ali Abdelatti
in Cairo; editing by Giles Elgood)
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